This invention relates generally to a guidance system and more particularly to a guidance system for an artillery projectile.
Delivery errors are known to significantly degrade the effectiveness of artillery projectiles. Adding guidance capability to the fuze mounted at the nose of the projectile is highly desirable because it can be used to retrofit legacy hardware. However, the packaging volume is very limited.
Prior guidance systems utilizing canards have been proposed. See for example the following patents:                U.S. Pat. No. 4,373,688;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,438,893;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,537;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,568,039;        U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,514, and        U.S. Pat. No. 6,502,786.        
However, many of the prior systems utilize canard actuators, which require substantial volume and/or the designs have significantly added to the cost of the fuze.
What is needed is a simple guidance system which fits within the existing package volume and which is relatively inexpensive compared to prior guidance systems for artillery projectiles.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.
All US patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.